


If You Asked Me Now Who I Am

by wrong_century



Category: History Boys (2006), History Boys - All Media Types, History Boys - Bennett
Genre: Hector (mentioned), Irwin (mentioned), Mrs Lintott (mentioned), Slow Burn, original play style swearing, university soul searching, working out who you are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 19:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11996388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrong_century/pseuds/wrong_century
Summary: Being at Oxford doesn't necessarily fix everything, they've still got to work out who they are and who they want to be.





	If You Asked Me Now Who I Am

If you asked me now who I am, the only answer I could give with any certainty would be my name.

_Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh_

 

  
  
  
  
Oxford was both more and less than Scripps had imagined.  
  
There was the otherworldly architecture and the frankly bizarre metriculation, off set by lectures in which he was just one of the masses, and a life he began to carve for himself that, could he honestly say was better than Sheffield?  
  
There had been no bolt of lightning and he didn’t suddenly know what to do with himself or how to behave, how to be in any given situation.  
  
Perhaps he had been too lucky at school, he sometimes thought. Without Hector and without Irwin - and without Mrs Lintott, he stubbornly added - he might not have made it to Oxford. But without them he might also have been more impressed when he got there. His tutor group discussions were banal at best (he had more than once found himself longing for a piano and an Ending), God was still looming over everything as He was wont to do, and the people here were uniformly posh and dull.  
  
Before getting to Oxford, he had thought that being from a year that had, as one, been accepted into Oxbridge was something of an achievement, something that could set him apart if he wanted it to. But that was before he had met all the Etonians, and the Harrovians, and the Ladies of Cheltenham College and Wycombe Abbey. They were all there and had known each other for years and perfected their impenetrable social circle, building on centuries of tradition.  
  
Not that Scripps had wanted to penetrate it, for lack of a better word. He was used to being considered an outsider, he didn’t talk on like the others did, preferring to observe instead. Posner was a different kind of outsider, gazing in, sighing. Dakin made a merit of his outsider status, of the burr on his voice, and there was a fair proportion of those ladies who seemed keen to experiment with a bit of rough and who was Dakin to deny them that.  
  
He grew more sensitive to being mocked though, there was something of a fragile edge to it and if anyone found out about the Nee-shaw incident Scripps would certainly suffer.  
  
And so he went on. Laughing at the antics of those around him, an eloquent eye roll the biggest reaction he offered. He wrote it all down though, Hector stayed with him enough for that habit to persist.  
  
Scripps couldn’t help but think though, head clasped in one hand in the quiet of the chapel, that there was something missing, that the great brilliance of university had yet to reveal itself to him.  
  
Dakin would, of course, still say this was because of the distinct lack of fucking of any kind in his life. Scripps tried not to think about this in church, certain that God, the poor bastard, didn’t deserve  to suffer through Dakin’s opinions on what constituted a full and happy life. He was equally certain, however, that Dakin was wrong.  
  
Fucking was, if one believed in that sort of thing, verging on spectacular. Scripps didn’t think it was magical though. It would not make all his doubts and concerns about his university career somehow disappear. Nor would it fill the gap that he was beginning to be convinced formed a large portion of himself. No, fucking, very nice though it might be, was not the answer.  
  
Girls, on the other hand…  
  
He hadn’t spent much time with them in the past. There were no girls at Cutlers of course and it dawned on him, after some time feeling bemused and overwhelmed by the sheer number of girls Oxford contained, that the only women he had ever really known were his mother and Mrs Lintott.  
  
Again, once more with feeling for Dakin at the back, it wasn’t about sex. There were plenty of girls he came across that he would call pretty - long hair, and soft skin, and breasts - but the one’s that really seemed to catch him were the ones with edges. The angry ones and the stomping ones and the ones with haircuts that made him stare in awe from the safety of his own short back and sides. He lost himself for some time in one at his college that wasn’t wearing shoes out on the quad, and when he caught sight of a flicker of a tattoo poking out of a sleeve on another it cost him an afternoon of concentration in the library.  
  
Very quickly, he created an aura of myth around them, a sense of the other so profound that it was of great benefit to women everywhere that one day he actually spoke to one.  
  
Emma Martin was in his Bodleian induction group and initially he had written her off as on of those pretty posh girls he didn’t find very interesting, one that Dakin would talk to at a bar. They didn’t speak then, the induction was serious and he had to make a vow and it was one of the only times he experienced one of those Oxford shivers he had been expecting every day. About six weeks later, he sees her again and speaks to her, or rather she speaks to him.  
  
They’re in the Bodleian again, he’s nabbed a desk for himself and his essays and she’s wandering somewhat vaguely between the shelves, squinting at the book numbers. She catches sight of him first and makes her way to his desk.  
  
“Oi, you were in my induction weren’t you? Were you paying attention when they were talking about where poetry was?”  
  
She’s speaking in a lowered voice but it’s still oddly penetrating and he glances around to see who they could be annoying before looking up at her. She’s not looking at him but at the shelves again and there’s enough despondency in her expression to make him imagine that maybe she, like him, has been disappointed by Oxford.  
  
“Anyone specific?”  
  
“Hardy,” she sighs. “Under either H or D for depressing.”  
  
He nods and gets to his feet and heads off in what feels like the right direction.  
  
“I always liked his poetry better than his novels actually,” he comments. “What’s it for?”  
  
He knows a slight twinge of jealousy. History is his subject, but he wishes his course allowed for a bit more literature.  
  
“‘The Renaissance Man as Writer.’ You know, Hardy’s a novelist and a poet. Wilde’s a playwright and a novelist.”  
  
He nods again and opens his mouth to say it sounds interesting, because it does, but she’s not paying attention and there’s a kindling look in her eye that’s beginning to make her posh prettiness more interesting.  
  
“Fucking nonsense of course. What my fossil of a Professor doesn’t understand is that all female writers are more truly Renaissance - writing and putting up with the shit of the men around them is nothing short of a miracle.”  
  
He throws her an amused look. “History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men.’” he quotes.  
  
She looks at him and it’s the first time she’s really paid attention to who he is, he can tell. The anger has returned to a simmer below the surface and she looks interested.  
  
“Who said that?”  
  
“My old history teacher,” he sighed and put his hands in his pockets. “I think she suffered.”  
  
She sweeps a glance over him and he feels as though she can see the other boys in his class ranged around him.  
  
“I bet she did.”  
  
She looks back at the shelves and reaches out for a book. “Hardy,” she comments checking the spine. “Thanks.”  
  
He nods and spreads a hand, and in another age that would have been a bow. “Any time.”  
  
She leaves with the book and he returns to his desk. Later, he determines the exchange worthy of being written in his notebook, but it doesn’t occur to him that that had probably been the best opening he had ever had with a girl. He had said the right things at the right time and who knows, she might have agreed if he had asked if she wanted to get a watery cup of tea from the canteen.  
  
It didn’t occur to him though and the idea of using one of Tott’s ‘gobbits’ to pick up girls seemed somehow disrespectful.

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

  
  
Posner disappears, quite intentionally, at the beginning of the Michaelmas term. He has, despite how the others insisted on viewing him, always been rather a decided sort of person.  
  
He had decided he would sing, and he had.  
  
He had decided that he loved Dakin, and he did, or had.  
  
He had decided he would go to Oxford and here he was, with a scholarship no less.  
  
He allowed himself to wallow in that a bit, he had done incredibly well. But then he had decided he would so there was no tinge of surprise to his pride.  
  
There was, however, a slight edge of guilt because of the way he had got in. Being congratulated on managing to emotionally distance himself from the Holocaust was not something he took pride in. And his guilt was not unmixed with contempt. That Oxford, this pinnacle of higher education and learning, could be so easily manipulated by a few of Irwin’s tactics. Irwin who turned out not to even have attended Oxford in the end, and hadn’t Dakin been furious about that, much as he tried to hide it.  
  
It all gave access to a lurking suspicion that perhaps Oxford wasn’t all that.  
  
What Oxford was though, was new. And the sheer number of people, from everywhere, doing everything - this at least didn’t disappoint.  
  
David Posner took a deep breath, let go of everything that he had been before, and started again.  
  
One or two things lingered - he wrote to his parents a lot, they still liked to hear what he was up to, he just had to edit a bit more carefully now; and he had decided he was going to get a First Class degree so he worked to do that as well. Everything else, though, he gave up and it had to earn its place back, he decided. He didn’t want to do anything out of habit any more.  
  
He thought that he was a grown up now. He wasn’t, of course, but he was closer than he had been at school and it made a difference.  
  
Reading earned a place back quickly and also, more surprisingly, singing. No Scripps at the piano this time, ready to pick up by ear anything Posner felt like singing, but a dark basement bar, a drink sloshing in his hand, a broken piano to sit on and a crowd to join in on the choruses. Perhaps not his most technically brilliant performances, but some of his most enjoyable and certainly the most appreciative crowd.  
  
Soon enough he found himself doing it semi-regularly and was given free drinks with enough sporadic consistency to indicate a species of agreement between himself and the staff.  
  
So singing was allowed to stay.  
  
There were boys too, which was both new and old.  
  
There was the one who got the ball rolling, a bit older and with an almost patronising friendliness which made it clear it wouldn’t last. But for the few weeks it did, it felt like a confirmation of everything he had been imaging during his teenage years.  
  
Then there was Jamie. Tall and blonde and blue eyed, with wide shoulders from rowing. He had a good speaking voice and a calm non-judgemental air about him. Some weeks after they met and Posner had admitted to himself that he rather thought he loved this one too, he studied the sinking suspicion that followed this realisation. That maybe he was a second Dakin. That this was perhaps something he hadn’t been able to leave behind. He would simply spend his days falling again and again for the unreachable and the unresponsive.  
  
But, Jamie wasn’t like Dakin. True, there was probably even less likelihood of something happening with him than there had been with Dakin, but Jamie made this decently obvious and didn’t then tease him with flirting and winking and telling tales of conquests.  
  
As well as that, he actually spoke to Posner and looked him in the eye while doing so. He might not be interested in him romantically, but he was interested in what Posner had to say and his opinions. It felt like something of a novelty, though people had listened to him before even if he hadn’t realised, and Posner had gained a good enough knowledge of himself to realise how important he found that.  
  
So, he decided, he wouldn’t pine and he would keep Jamie as a friend, not allow his spaniel heart to rule and not be too entirely overwhelmed by the fact he would use proper grammar in notes left stuck to Posner’s door.  
  
With this decision, Posner emerged from his self-imposed isolation from his old life and old friends a few weeks before Hannukah and Christmas, and began to look about him for the old parts of his life again.  
  
Dakin was, on evidence, pretty much as he had ever been, forcing Oxford to make room for him rather than the other way round.  
  
Posner started studying with Akhtar in the Bod, found that the other boy seemed to fit perfectly into the Oxford he wanted for himself, not reaching to dizzying heights but settled in his space and confident.  
  
Scripps, he couldn’t find at first and he began to feel almost panicky after three or four days and was contemplating hanging around outside the college chapel for a while when he finally saw him.  
  
It’s immediately obviously why Posner hadn’t noticed him at first. He had been fairly convinced Scripps would be alone (in suspension, waiting for Posner so they could pick up where they left off), or perhaps with Dakin, but here there’s a girl.  
  
For a moment, the ridiculous thought that they’ve been boarded, that this was some sort of invasion flashed in his mind, but then Scripps caught sight of him and his face cracked in a blinding smile and he grabbed David in a tight hug.  
  
A dark little part of his mind that he hadn’t quite been able to get over yet whispered meanly ‘Posner’s reward’, but then Scripps was pulling back, still grinning and holding onto his arms and saying “Pos, where have you _been_?” and the voice died out, the girl ceased to matter and it was just Scripps, as he ever was.

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

  
  
After time, David realised that of course Scripps had changed. Just because he didn’t do it as decisively or consciously as Posner, Oxford has still had its effect.  
  
He doesn’t need to be angry to be forced into expressing his opinion any more, though he was still happier doing it in writing than in speech. He had joined the college paper as well, and Posner was forced to squash his first sneering though of journalism that had an echo of Hector to it. He read some back issues and Scripps’ columns were good and improving and he was being allowed to write about more interesting subjects, but it’s still not David’s preferred style and while he continued to get every edition of the paper he only ever read Scripps’ column and occasionally not even that much, just a glance to see the by line ‘By Donald Scripps’ and then back to thick, dusty History.  
  
It was also quickly evident that the girl did matter, and it was a change harder to reconcile than even the journalism. At first, jealousy flared up in him to the exclusion of everything else and he couldn’t even feel any curiosity. He felt betrayed and couldn’t help thinking of it as rather a Dakin-ish thing to do. It was impossible to think fairly that Scripps had every right to spend time with someone else, especially if he liked her, and even more especially because Posner had been absent himself for months. This sensible reasoning didn’t make much headway in his thoughts though and he ended up avoiding Scripps when Emma is also there.  
  
Scripps didn’t say anything, not outright, but he does sometimes ask if Posner’s alright, and more than that was the concerned looks, but however much of a good observationist Scripps was, he didn’t see why he occasionally felt anxious about Posner.  
  
Eventually though they are forced into the same space, it’s inevitable. Scripps allowed things to just happen around him and to him to too great an extent to allow Posner to continue avoiding Emma.  
  
The first time it was because they were both waiting for Scripps outside the college chapel and the green flares in David again because this was his role and his space, always had been, and what was she doing in it?  
  
“Not a fan?” she asked, nodding towards the chapel.  
  
“Jewish.” he allowed shortly. Then, after a pause, because he wanted to know what Scripps saw in her, he added, “You?”  
  
“Can’t get behind all the patriarchal faith bollocks, to be honest. Just another system for rich influential white men to control everyone else. You know Jesus, if he even existed in any way whatsoever, wouldn’t have been white, right?”  
  
Posner thought his mouth might be hanging open a bit.  
  
“I’m doing a Messiah Theory unit next term,” she carries on, oblivious, or knowing and pleased but not showing it. “What do you think about Mr Darcy as a Messiah figure and all the women as Eves?”  
  
He blinked a bit, felt his literary theory gears creaking with disuse then lurching up to speed. “I think his arc is too redemptive to be Messianic and Lizzie is forgiven for her fall, Eve isn’t.”  
  
She looked at him and then nodded consideringly. Scripps emerged from the chapel before she could present any evidence for Jesus Darcy, though, and Posner was surprised when he felt a slight disappointment for it. This disappeared quickly, however, because Scripps smiled squintingly at him and he knew that one, it was when he was trying not to show how pleased he was.  
  
Emma was apparently only there to return a book and she disappeared again soon after, leaving Scripps and Posner alone to walk down to the river, cold hands jammed in their jacket pockets.  
  
They run into each other more often and Posner began to grow used to seeing her with Scripps in public places. They’re not demonstrative, no hand holding or kissing. She does appear to borrow his jumper more often than he wears it though, seemingly incapable of judging the weather and happier to have her hands sticking out of the sleeves of one of his sweatshirts.  
  
The sense of soft well being Posner always felt when he saw Scripps wearing one doesn’t transfer itself to Emma.  
  
And she would tuck herself into Scripps’ side against fatigue or the cold, and he would sling an easy arm around her shoulder, pulling her in even though she was a bit taller than him, making her look small and protected.  
  
Posner didn’t examine the feeling that he wanted to be the one in the bracket of Scripps’ arm too closely, and he got used to that as well.  
  
The first time he saw them together in Scripps’ room, it derailed him a bit.  
  
He was resigned to her by this point, even enjoyed speaking to her sometimes, and he saw a lot of Scripps without her so it all seemed bearable. Then he barged into Scripps’ room without knocking, feet stamping against the new year’s cold and fingers holding open his place in the book he was carrying. He opened his mouth to speak almost before he was through the door and was only stopped by Scripps’ hastily upheld hand and the way he nodded towards the bed.  
  
Emma was curled up on top of the covers, wearing another of Scripps’ jumpers and fast asleep.  
  
“She’s had a bit of a week.” Scripps said in a low voice.  
  
She did look pale, and somehow diminished, dark circles under her eyes. Posner noticed it all but it didn’t seem to really penetrate his mind. All he could see was the girl in Scripps’ bed, in his clothes, taking up residence in his space, ownership in every instance.  
  
He stood on the room’s threshold for some time, staring he knew but unable to stop. Eventually Scripps got to his feet and pushed Posner out of the room, back into the corridor and followed him out, pulling the door half closed behind them.  
  
“Come on,” he said, leading the way to the stairs and sitting down a couple from the top. David, in a daze, sat down beside him. “Don’t want to go far,” Scripps explained. “She was crying for about an hour, want to be around when she wakes up.” He sighed, loudly and with some annoyance tinged with resignation, and rested his head in his hand, covering his eyes. “Times like this I think it would be good to smoke.” There was a little, sad laugh and then he fell silent for so long Posner thought he might be praying.  
  
“Are you alright?” he finally asked, not wanting to interrupt.  
  
And Posner knew he should have be asking about Emma, but Scripps was the one sitting next to him looking broken and that was what made the bottom of his stomach drop in some unnamed fear. Scripps who was philosophical in the face of tragedy and disaster, who would accept the burdens of other people’s troubles easily and calmly and never seemed to need help himself. Posner reached out a tentative hand to his shoulder and held it there. Scripps didn’t answer his question but leaned into his side a bit. They sat in silence on the stairs until they were numb.  
  
David never found out what had happened to Emma that had taken so much out of Scripps, but the next time he saw her she appeared fully recovered, a little harder perhaps, certainly more confrontational.  
  
She walked right up to him and looked him in the eye as she said, “Don says you’re an amazing singer.”  
  
He looked mildly at Scripps behind her, who simply shrugged, folding his arms, and David was faced with what felt like defending himself. This was how he ended up inviting them to the bar where he sometimes sang and also how Scripps, inevitably, met Jamie.

 

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

  
It turned into a bit more of a night that originally planned. Scripps arranged to meet Pos there, but when he left to pick up Emma and head over he met Dakin coming up the stairs towards him, intent on declaiming all the most recent events in the Life of Dakin. As it was clear Scripps was on his way out, Dakin did an about turn and walked with him, starting in on his own news without bothering to ask where he was going.  
  
In one of those twists that happen in Oxford if you’re not paying attention, they come across Rudge and Akhtar outside the Bod and quickly fall in together without planning to. Outside the gates of Balliol College, Emma watched the four of them approaching with a raised eyebrow and Scripps tried to look as apologetic as he could for an extension of himself, and reminded the others who she was. Dakin made his usual attempt to charm anything with a pulse, Emma found him more amusing than offensive, and the group carried on happily enough.  
  
It was only when they were at the door of Posner’s bar that any of the other Cutler boys thought to ask what they’re doing and ‘Meeting Pos’ is all Scripps thought to explain as he led the way inside. The others were satisfied and followed him.  
  
It was one of those dark underground places where you couldn’t see much and most of the lighting was red. Scripps can see enough to realise nearly everyone here was intimidatingly cool and that he, in his plain shirt, stands out. It wasn’t even satin and he could see more than one bloke in make up. The barman rolled his eyes in boredom at their beer order and there was a loud fog of conversation above an indistinguishable but no doubt cutting edge record.  
  
Posner spotted them though, and he looked mostly as he usually did, and they had a group that can talk as well as anyone, and though Akhtar looked sort of permanently surprised and Rudge bemused and too tall and broad the be there, Dakin switches to a lethal house special for the second round and Scripps settled into it a bit more.  
  
It was soon clear that Posner was a bit of a favourite here, nodes and embraces from staff and punters alike, and the five of them get curious sweeping looks as well. Emma dived into the crowd after a woman with a shaved head that she sort of knew and Scripps though that when she turned up again she might have half her hair missing, he would be interested to see it but on the other hand he was inclined to be happy that Posner hadn’t adopted any of the more flamboyant  fashion choices of those surrounding them. Dakin he could see with a bit of eyeliner, but Posner was best as himself, clean and precise, occasionally soft and sleep rumpled but not many people got the chance to see that.  
  
Scripps was a few pints in and quiet, more like he used to be at school, but in a reverie rather than paying attention to what was going on around him so he missed the pleased expression blossoming on Posner’s face and him waving someone over. He did notice it when Jamie was introduced to them and looked the stranger over with more care than he might do if Posner didn’t look so interested. ‘Adonis’ was what immediately floats into his mind (and it was how he referred to Jamie in his notebook later as well) and when he saw the spark of pleasure and infatuation in Posner’s eye his brain supplied ‘Venus’ as well.  
  
He conveniently forgets the bleak outcome of that particular epic and lost himself gazing up at them for some time. It was only when he say that Jamie’s expression has turned questioning that he realised that he had drifted too far and blinked himself back to the present. He muttered something dryly witty and Posner looked pleased with him now and that was a bit much so he got to his feet, gathered a few empties and escaped to the bar, deciding it must be his round.  
  
By the time he got back to their table, Jamie had joined them properly and taken Scripps’ chair as well, which Scripps refused to see symbolism in. He scrounged up another and carved out a spot for him and watched.  
  
Emma returned, all the hair still present on her head but she must have been at the same thing Dakin was now drinking because she was pink cheeked and seemed suddenly almost boneless. Collapsing down onto the edge of the bench, she lent up against a surprised Rudge who was forced to fling out an arm to keep her in place and keep it there so she stayed braced upright.  
  
Jamie, as far as Scripps could tell, was keeping up with the conversation. Some feat, because out of those Oxford students who know and understood the more classical quotes, fewer knew the films, and even less could decipher the shorthand used by Hector’s boys. Emma didn’t try particularly, bulldozing her way through the conversation as usual, leaving devastation and open mouths in her wake and seemingly enjoying it that way.

Scripps noticed the moment when Dakin decided to challenge Jamie, over what it was hard to saw. Over Posner possibly, over knowledge perhaps, almost certainly over the fact they’re both 19 year old boys with a certain amount of social power. Whatever it was, and it was possible even Dakin didn’t know, he fixed his eyes on Jamie, shoved his hands in his pockets and slouched down further in his seat, drawing all attention to himself easily. The Cutler boys turned towards him almost without realising, anticipating the show, but Jamie and Emma are unable to help themselves either.  
  
“How do you know our David then?” he asked, and it could have been innocuous enough except it was Dakin asking and he didn’t stop there. “Because, let me tell you, he might seem like the innocent, boyish sort but there’s more than meets the eye there. He feels things, does David, and we won’t have him hurt. Are you going to hurt him?”  
  
The emphasis on ‘hurt’ was just a bit too much and Dakin was watching Jamie like he was prey and Dakin wants nothing more than to make him slip up, fluster him, then eat him.  
  
Posner looked annoyed and Scripps vaguely heard him telling Dakin to fuck off. Part of him knew he should be angry on Posner’s behalf, maybe even try to get Dakin to stop, but he found himself wanting to hear Jamie’s answer and it obscured everything else.  
  
Jamie, for his part, looked bemused and glanced around the group, perhaps trying to gauge whether this was a joke, before realising that he was going to have to answer.  
  
“We’re in the same tutor group.” (Scripps later noted down in his book that Adonis had a nice speaking voice.) “We were on the same side about the role propaganda plays in the understanding of the real state of society and got talking.”  
  
“Propaganda,” Rudge snorts. “Is just lies.”  
  
“Ah, but lies with purpose, that’s the important bit.” Akhtar chipped in.  
  
“All lies have a purpose, otherwise why tell them.” Posner argued and they were off again.  
  
Scripps was a bit disappointed, he wanted to hear more than ‘we met in a tutor group’. What have they been doing since they met? What made them carry on talking after that?  
  
He was staring more than he should be, barley contributing at all, but he still couldn’t find it in himself to feel grateful when Emma interrupts.  
  
“I thought you were going to sing,” she told Posner, leaning across the table and fixing him with a look that was no less forceful for a being a little misted by drunk. “I was told there would be singing.”  
  
Posner nodded, accepting the challenge and getting to his feet.  
  
“And singing there will be.” He promised with a flourish and a bow, a few gins down himself and ever the performer.  
  
Turning from them, he was swallowed up into the crowd before reappearing a few minutes later, head and shoulders above everyone else, apparently standing on what passes for a stage, leaning on the top of an old upright piano. The crowd was beginning to turn towards him, dropping conversations in favour of listening to whatever Posner was going to do.  
  
“Ladies and gents,” he began and is interrupted by a round of applause and a wolf whistle from Akhtar before he can get any further. He was a bit pink with pleasure as he raised his hand for quiet. “We’re very lucky tonight to have a talented pianist here, who I was hoping to persuade to try and get some music out of this poor old girl.”  
  
He patted the top of the piano affectionately, but he's staring at Scripps, beseechingly, and Scripps stared back. It took him some time to realise something was expected of him, too long apparently because there were hands on his back, shoving him forwards and he stumbled to his feet and into the crowd.  
  
Posner was beaming and there was anticipation there that was enough to make Scripps sit down quickly on the broken chair in front of the piano. He stared down at it fixedly, rested his hands gently on the keys. He hasn’t played a piano in months and he was probably too drunk for this, almost certainly too drunk to be alone in this bubble with Posner, the crowd having faded away to leave just the two of them.  
  
He took a breath, played a quick run across the keys and looked up at Posner, raising his brows in question. Posner looked like Christmas or Hanukkah or something and, Scripps suddenly realised, proud.

It was enough, more than enough, too much.  
  
He smiled and tilted his head and began to play, inviting Posner to join him. Two bars in and Posner knew the song and his face lit up before he composed himself for his first words, facing the crowd.  
  
The tune and the movement of his fingers on the keys and Posner’s own particularly timing comes back to Scripps easily. The piano did have a disconcerting habit of occasionally not making any noise when he attempted a note, but it was not out of tune and he made up for it by singing the tune himself and filling any potential gaps that might occur.  
  
Their efforts were received well by the crowd, but Scripps’ concentration remained fixed on Posner, more than it used to be. There was no need for flourishing here, no teasing looks at Dakin and it barely even felt like a performance - it was just them, doing what they do, and it was as natural as talking, as breathing.  
  
Posner glanced down at him and smiled, just slightly, and there it was. The bit that was missing. The bolt of lightning as more of a gentle glow that made it all make sense, accompanied with one of those Oxford shivers that made this whole thing worthwhile.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope the tenses are all right, I've lost brain power... Also commas *everywhere*
> 
> Scripps was in Mrs Lintott's camp, fight me.


End file.
